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Obama Puts His Own Mark on Foreign Policy Issues

WASHINGTON — When he took office last year, President Obama told his foreign policy advisers that he had two baskets of issues to deal with. The first would be the legacy issues left from his predecessor, like Iraq, Afghanistan and America’s image in the world. The second would be his own agenda for the future.

After 15 months addressing the vexing matters he inherited, Mr. Obama is now aggressively advancing his own vision of foreign policy and defining himself more clearly on the world stage. The 47-nation conference on nuclear security he wrapped up on Tuesday represented a chance to assert proactive leadership rather than simply showing that he is not George W. Bush.

“Now he’s beginning to get back to the agenda that he came to office to do,” said Nancy E. Soderberg, a former diplomat and now president of The Connect U.S. Fund, a nonprofit group that promotes international engagement. “His legacy in domestic policy is likely to be health care. But his legacy in foreign policy is likely to be this nonproliferation agenda.”

The nuclear summit meeting came after weeks of a more assertive approach to international affairs, as Mr. Obama seeks to demonstrate strength in the face of assumptions overseas that he may be weak.

He refused to give in to Russian demands for limits on missile defense and came away with an arms control treaty that, while modest, sets the stage for better relations. He got into high-profile scraps with the leaders of Israeland Afghanistan. And now he faces a critical test of whether he can forge a coalition to impose new sanctions on Iran.

Mr. Obama in recent days has backed down in his clash with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. But during his news conference closing the nuclear meeting on Tuesday, he seemed to signal a renewed determination to reinsert himself into the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

By describing the long-running conflict as a threat to American security, he effectively adopted the argument of Gen. David H. Petraeus, his Middle East commander, who recently warned that the region’s troubles created a dangerous environment for American troops stationed in nearby Iraq and elsewhere in the area. “It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower,” he said. “And when conflicts break out, one way or another, we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”

For most new presidents, foreign policy is a learning experience, and it can take months, if not years, to feel comfortable in the role of world leader. Advisers said Mr. Obama, like his predecessors, had grown more confident in managing international relations over time.

But he has learned hard lessons along the way about the limits of his powers of persuasion.

He has acknowledged that he underestimated, for instance, just how hard it would be to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, and his engagement with Iran yielded no more cooperation than Mr. Bush’s approach.

If there is an Obama doctrine emerging, it is one much more realpolitik than his predecessor’s, focused on relations with traditional great powers and relegating issues like human rights and democracy to second-tier concerns. He has generated much more good will around the world after years of tension with Mr. Bush, and yet he does not seem to have strong personal friendships with many world leaders.

Photo

President Obama surrounded by world leaders on Tuesday, before a group photo at the nuclear security talks in Washington.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

“Everybody always breaks it down between idealist and realist,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. “If you had to put him in a category, he’s probably more realpolitik, like Bush 41,” the first President George Bush, Mr. Emanuel said.

He added, “He knows that personal relationships are important, but you’ve got to be cold-blooded about the self-interests of your nation.”

Stephen G. Rademaker, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, said: “For a president coming out of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, it’s remarkable how much he has pursued a great power strategy. It’s almost Kissingerian. It’s not very sentimental. Issues of human rights do not loom large in his foreign policy, and issues of democracy promotion, he’s been almost dismissive of.”

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Indeed, on the sidelines of the meeting, Mr. Obama met with leaders with poor human rights records, like President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, a former Communist boss who has kept a firm grip on his former Soviet republic for two decades.

Mr. Nazarbayev, whose country has considerable oil and uranium resources, plastered Washington with newspaper and bus stop ads touting it as a responsible partner. Mr. Obama reached agreement with Mr. Nazarbayev to fly supplies to Afghanistan over Kazakhstan, with no real public criticism of the country.

During their private meeting, he told Mr. Nazarbayev “that we, too, are working to improve our democracy,” a White House official later told reporters, a comment interpreted as soft-pedaling concerns over repressive Kazakh rule. Aides later said that oversimplified the private conversation, and that in fact Mr. Obama spent considerable time talking with Mr. Nazarbayev about democracy and human rights behind closed doors.

Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an advocacy group that ranks Kazakhstan as “Not Free,” said she believed Mr. Obama was committed to promoting democracy, citing a recent meeting with democracy advocates. “The rhetoric is going the right way,” she said. “But it’s not really translated, as far as I can see, into coherent policy in some of the toughest places around the world.”

Other foreign policy specialists said that it simply reflected a more pragmatic view of the world. Expectations that other countries would bow to Mr. Obama’s wishes because he is more popular than his predecessor were always misplaced, they said, and they sometimes resist him, but not because they are testing him.

“All these other countries, they have their own interests,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and a member of the House Armed Services Committee. “They don’t get out of bed in the morning thinking, ‘Gosh, how can I make America’s life better?’ ”

With health care behind him, Mr. Obama has an opportunity to focus on translating his vision for foreign policy into reality. “It’s both strengthened and liberated him so he could deal with other things with wind in his sails,” said Richard N. Haass, a former top official in George W. Bush’s State Department who now leads the Council on Foreign Relations.

The treaty with Russia, the nuclear meeting and other initiatives, he added, are the beginning of progress for Mr. Obama. “These are not transformational developments,” he said, “but in foreign policy it’s important to keep the ball moving down the field in the right direction, and that’s what’s happening.”

A version of this news analysis appears in print on April 14, 2010, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Puts Own Mark On Foreign Policy Issues. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe